Vent Your Biggest Work Pet Peeves
- People who bloviate on conference calls when everyone else is just trying to wrap up and get to other things
- Bonus points for being the guy who tells an analyst to put an hour on the calendar to discuss a trivial clarification question
- MDs requesting numerous cumbersome changes to CIMs / Models in the early iterations, then telling you to change back to the original version once they realize there is a reason why you did something a certain way to begin with (which you tried to explain to them)
- Clients not providing any of the information you requested from them yet thinking if they're rude enough they can force you to get to market faster
- Staying in the office until midnight and spending three hours from 5:00PM to 8:00PM trying to look busy while you wait for actionable feedback from the client/boss
First-year analysts/interns blatantly doing something the lazy way and acting oblivious that they didn't format/check their work. "OHHH, now that you mention it I did format this table pasted from excel differently than the formatting on every other slide in this deck"
Aite thats me sometimes im sorry
By far something I've hated for my whole life. People who verbalize their sneezes, the people who verbalize "aahhh chooo" in a sneeze. There's something about it that makes me feel like the person does it merely to gain attention. These suckers are always the loudest sneezers too.
My bad.
trust me I wish I could stop sneezing so loud, that shit hurts sometimes
Dinged
Idk why but it kind of annoys me when a fellow analyst/associate dips out early on a night when the MDs are traveling and says he/she has something they have to run for. Like bruh, I'm not the one deciding your bonus, just say you're getting tf out of here because it's 6PM and you can for once.
Views From the Real Estate World:
I'm curious where you draw the line between outsourcing everything versus running a tight shop. Most small developers I know don't self perform anything, they're assembling the cap stack, getting entitlements/permits, assembling and managing the design and construction teams and managing lease-up through disposition. You need a ton of third parties over the course of the development even if you do CM or GC work yourself. Plus the above items I listed they do seems to be value-add to me, it's definitely not a piece of cake managing that whole process.
Hah! Does that really happen? I feel like I've only ever seen this for very new shops where the founders have just struck out and are being a little fuzzy with their definition of "firm experience" versus "personal experience". And it's hard to blame someone for that kind of hustle.
Also gotta agree with jarstar on the next one - being a developer is about bringing together and coordinating a bunch of different skill sets, and then taking on the risk that things go belly up. What "value" do you want a developer to provide?
Oh yeah, big time. As for developers, I drink the kool-aid of my shop and we have a hard-on for owner-operators who do PM/Construction/Leasing in house. We buy into the whole "rather have a great sponsor in a tough market than crappy sponsor blah blah blah" thing. I will say though, vertically integrated Sponsors do have their shit more together in my experience. Their reporting is better, more accurate and there are better people to intelligently explain it or what we're going to do about it. Plus I'm jaded from one bad experience we had with a rather hands-off merchant build developer that totally botched a deal we did with them. It just felt like they were constantly running into surprises because they weren't boots on the ground real estate people. Then worst of all things would get lost in translation and the Sponsor would yell at the PM team on our monthly catch-up meetings, not realizing how bad it made him look that he still didn't have things straight with his team. Nightmare, shows you the value of one experienced owner-operator taking control from top to bottom.
Starting with those above me.
Man, points 2 and 3 hit home way too hard. Especially #2 though. Had a principal in PE who would do this all the time and ALWAYS ask some asinine detailed question on materials I had about 10min pre-call to review. Then when I'd not even stumble but say something like "I will revert after a deepdive on the materials" after a curveball question, would get lambasted for not being on top of it... One of those things which I tried learning from and asking for weekly call schedules in advance but just never worked due to the principal being a massive dick.
Literally happened to me 30 minutes ago. Was invited to an "internal discussion" which turned out to be a risk committee approval and me being peppered with questions on a file I glanced at 3 weeks ago.
How do you respond to point #2? I think it's always difficult to find a fine line between a cover-my-ass response with something professional to avoid throwing them under the bus too.
Mostly just listen and respond where appropriate. I generally stay current on the markets and deals and am pretty good with process related stuff, usually that gets me through without sounding clueless. No matter what, I won't throw them under the bus in front of the client. It reflects very poorly on the firm and I'd like to think on me as well.
- "Let's run a scenario for "XYZ", don't work too hard on it but I want it on my desk by tomorrow morning, I want to show the Client that we care. I will not CC you on the email, because I have a personal relationship"
- "Can you run me the set of potential buyers, nothing fancy, I just want to make sure we cover every basis, don't work too hard on it, but I want it on my desk by tomorrow morning, I want several pages to send to the Client to show we are on top of everything and we are a lead bank"
- "Can you please print this PDF?, I don't know how to print myself"
- "I talked to the client, and he mentioned XYZ, can you please retrieve this info for me. Don't spin your wheels, but I'd like a full page deck to send to the client for tomorrow morning. I will CC you to show that you are a valuable member of the bank"
Srs question - do S&T guys work on "deals"? I thought yall just traded lol.
Your first point is too real lol
shitty excel backup/precedent etiquette
Clients who provide the bare minimum materials upon request. Then when you ask for more details, you find a variety of skeletons that need to be addressed that they simply weren't going to mention.
This guy is on the war path. I like it.
All of these are killing me lmaooooo
I'm on garden leave and reading this post makes me really happy I'm still on garden leave.
Am an intern this summer and was wondering if y’all had any pet peeves regarding interns that I can try and avoid.
Start by checking your f*cking grammar...
Literally. Bad spelling and grammar is really irritating.
I guess it's going to be uphill cycling
people that say "look" before talking sound like megalomaniacs to me who think their opinion matters more than it does
Or "Listen, ..."
Most annoying thing in consulting is when clients ask you for revenue forecasts/projection then make you tweak the model until you get to the same number they had. Firstly, why am I doing this shit if you already have a model? And secondly, why are you trying to fudge a somewhat objective opinion? You've already paid for us! You're pissing away all the money you spent on us just so our numbers match and not taking advantage of our capabilities. No leadership team or investor is going to buy the bullshit that both our model outputs are within 5% of each other. Clients man...
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I totally get that. And I also understand that sometimes companies just need a "stamp of approval" from a consultancy to make the case for an acquisition/business strategy. But if you ask us to finger fuck a model, at least be smart enough to accept that we will have ours come in a little lower so really sell the "objective review" rather than it be within $1-2M of your sales figures.
anyone who begins a sentence with "so"
anyone who says soup to nuts. first of all, no one starts with soup and ends with nuts. nuts are what you snack on when you're pregaming, not soup. expression makes no sense and is stupid as fuck
ditto for circle the wagons, at the end of the day, when its all said and done, and other wordy corporatespeak that does nothing but add word count to your bit on a conference call that could've been an email
anyone who reads powerpoint slides during a call. we're adults, send us the deck and then emphasize the highlights and new info during the call. or just have visuals plus bulletpoints and explain verbally, I know how to read.
phone calls that could've been an IM/email
emails/IMs that should be phone calls
zoom calls that should be phone calls
not knowing how to use zoom after 15 months of using zoom
too much cologne/perfume in the office
people who treat their keyboard letters like their ex spouse
no knock pop-ins
loud laughers
people who chit chat on group con calls because they have no social outlet. if you want to talk to Jeff, fucking call Jeff, the other 6 of us don't need to hear about how you shot a 95 and it was hot this past weekend
anyone who seriously believes they know how to forecast
talking to me about stocks that neither of us own/are investigating but just happen to be all over CNBC
older dudes speaking to me about females in the office when both of us are married and 3 of the usual female suspects are on my team
anytime someone wants to "run something by me" but really just wants to try to convince me of their shitty idea. you don't want my opinion, you want confirmation, fuck off
This one killed me lmao. Have an MD that constantly drops that.
I'm not one to judge but goddamn what kind of sick fuck meal progression is that.
it's so stupid, just say what you mean and mean what you say
no need to constantly be circling the wagons with boiling the ocean
This expression is carryover from its origination in the 1800s when multi-course meals frequently started with soup and finished with nuts (often paired with a port)
Along the same lines of stupid phrases, people who love to us military terms for no reason. It’s one of those things where you know they picture themselves as Captain Price from CoD but they’re not SAS... they’re a normal ass dude. Nothing wrong with being a normal dude.
Our 25 meter target, possible IEDs (dude WTF, it’s a potential problem that is fixable and won’t blow off my legs), HALO insertion (I promise that doesn’t just mean fast start to something, it’s a strategy for jumping out of a plane), conduct reconnaissance (you mean... Google something?).
I’ve found this less prevalent in tech but rampant in my previous construction job. Everything was like some “operation”, even worse they referred to themselves as the “navy seals of the company”- love the lowercase too.
work in construction myself, 10-4, mission critical, let's debrief, running recon... it's like the industry for people that were afraid to go to the services
if someone used IED in PWM I'd leave them FUBAR
Not knowing how to use zoom after 15 months killed me, I always have people try to get out of work with "well I've never used XYZ program before" and I'm like well computers have been around since the 80's fucking figure it out.
Circle the wagons... annoying except when you're finishing something and someone modifies it to "well let's circle the wagons and shoot the dogs, it's over boys" this just cracks me up for some reason.
Hey my bank used Webex and moved to a bank that used zoom, which definitely had some differences that I was not use to.
some good ones there ha
Impromptu meetings that could have been Slack (or other asynchronous) messages
Booking a meeting to discuss another meeting. I get it for prep for a big presentation, but a meeting to outline what we will discuss in the next meeting is entirely a waste of time.
Trying to force social interaction in said meetings. I really don’t want to talk about my personal life or weekend plans with 12 other people on the call. What difference does my favorite food make to you? We’re all just trying to leave this meeting.
Starting meetings with no context.
This one might be controversial, but sending me a message saying “Hey Malta” and waiting for me to reply before telling me what you want. Just send me a message outlining what you need and I’ll get it done. I hate, “How are you doing?” Bs before you tell me you need the password for our service account because the InfoSec team keeps ignoring you...
Bad leadership. There are two types of leadership: Good and bad. Doesn’t matter what industry it’s in. Bad leadership is indicative of a lazy personality. You wouldn’t hire someone with bad skills, but somehow leadership isn’t considered a learnable skill set.
The "Hey Jerome" is so annoying, no one is ever just saying high. Pleasantries in general at work, coffee chat/whatever in person chat is fine but we're all getting paid to do a job here this ain't a hobby, just tell me what you want and I'll do the same.
What if I send a Hey Malta and then just type what I want without waiting for you?
That’s not so bad. I’d still prefer one longer message than 15 messages each consisting of one sentence. But if you just send me what you want without waiting for me to converse in a bs way, that’s the main point.
not controversial at all. I completely agree. here's what I prefer
hey brofessor, have a quick favor [insert the level of urgency here, e.g. hoping to get answer quickly/this just popped into my head but doesn't need to be done this week/SOMETHINGS ON FIRE AND I NEED YOU NOW], can you please do XYZ
I don't need to be coddled, I need to have my time respected. relationships are built on respect, not empty small talk over IM. if you want small talk, fine, let's grab lunch or a drink or chat over coffee, not while I'm in the middle of trading or savoring the 30 minutes of free time I have between meetings
Very well articulated. Relationships aren’t built via small bs talk. Good commentary on sense of urgency today- I think that’s very important to convey (especially if you message someone after hours).
"Hey Malta"
I hate that too. The only time I do a variation of that would be to see if someone is available for something extended, as in "Hey Malta, are you available to chat?" Otherwise, I like to be direct with "Hey Malta do you have the monthly results for XYZ company?"
Have you ever clearly been on a phone call with a client and someone tries to start talking to you? That bugs me like none other. There are few things so pressing where you need to interrupt mid call.
learned a great tactic for this. if they make eye contact with you, give a little phantom tap on the ear, or better yet, just give them a thumbs down. I've done this with 100% success rate. if someone peers through my window and I'm on a call (and usually smiling) and then give them a thumbs down, they get the idea
more often than not, it wasn't important in the first place so this has the added benefit of allowing you to become a guy that people don't waste time with
It can be pretty tough at times communicating as a junior when the senior FA (very old school guy, pretty much a stock broker with the FA title) on my team comes running....I'm definitely going to give the thumb's down a try, I like that.
When my boss shits on me for making a mistake on the model, and I just sit there thinking how big of a shit-head he is
I thought you were like 15 or something like that?
nah lol im in my mid-to-late 20s
Pizz, broadly what industry do you cover?
it work at a equity L/S HF
something really pissed me off today. some fucking nerd senior guy is such a hardo in emails, he defines every single thing, so an e-mail that could conceivably be 2 sentences long comes in as a few paragraphs with accompanying backup. he's too thorough and it drives me crazy, just send a one line email ya fucking geek.
got one of those in my office too. buddy, we have all office meetings for this kinda thing, I wasn't ready to read a manifesto at 730am
overly verbose people are just giving you more evidence than required to say they really have nothing to say. in most settings, the more words someone writes about a simple topic, the less they know about said topic
Agree to the max. Some people need to understand that summarizing is a skill. Less tabs in a model = better, less words in a CIM = better, less sentences in an email = better.
I think people don’t realize being overly wordy completely defeats the purpose of whatever they wrote. I asked a new coworker if they could develop a check list of step by step for getting something set up and they came back with a 9 page document. It’s 4 steps, just people forget the exact commands to type. I ended up doing it myself- defeated the purpose. Nobody is going to read 9 pages once a week. That person also sends Slack messages as long as the entire Harry Potter series.
I get that, and it's annoying.
But I've been on the other side where a 2 sentence email is so vague you have no idea what the fuck they want you to do. Or worse, no one else understands that 2 sentence email either, so it leads to 3 meetings so everyone can figure it out.
Analysts who try to be over professional and talk like they’re in an interview 24/7, and lack any personality in their tone
hahahaha I can just imagine this one. hilarious. can you give some examples of the kinds of overly formal stuff that they think that they have to say, just for my amusement?
^^^ this person knows they are guilty
Demanding I finish a deck by EOD, only to not look at it for 3+ days, then giving a stack of comments on a Friday afternoon and asking for it back EOD
People who spend more energy trying to talk their way out of a task than it would take to do.
Have a repeat offender in my office, actually lots of them lazy fucks, lost my temper with one of them after three rebuttals of why a simple excel exercise couldn't be done for an engineering project "Buddy I did what I'm asking you to do last night I just forgot to fucking save it and I'm headed to a meeting, know where you stand and get this shit to me by 10"
Someone who hasn’t done the work mainly mba associates telling you how long a task should take
OUTSOURCED NOOBS
SHIT WFH VIRTUAL DESKTOP SOFTWARE
MICROMANAGING VPS
MDS WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OF PROCESSES
Any time someone calls me about something that could have been said in a two sentence email. Thanks for taking like 10 minutes out of my day. Also I get really sick of clients who have wildly overblown expectations for themselves. Like your niche pre-clinical drug pipeline that is just reformulations of existing drugs anyways isn't going to sell for 5 billion upfront to Pfizer or BMS. Like lets use our heads here. Also clients who have no understanding of their own industry. This one recently sent me their patient/sales assumptions and put the USA population for a specific disease at like 5x of what literally every single source online reports. I get massaging the numbers a bit, but lets stay in our solar system if possible. Then there is the mandatory shoutout to the senior bankers who seem to think that Friday afternoon is the only acceptable time to send me work. Little known fact, there are actually four other days of the work week before then. I can't say bankerisms annoy me tho because I find them so goofy and have started using them myself--product of my environment I guess.
Everything associated with IB, but some highlights:
lmfao on the WGL, making one now.
.
Can you elaborate on point one? Afflicted with lax-bro speak myself
Haha, I do it as well, it's less about the bro'y accent and more about not getting too comfortable/casual too quickly with your superiors. For example, your MD can make jokes about knocking back cocktails with clients or being hungover after a closing dinner - but that doesn't mean the first-year analyst should be bringing any attention to the fact that they drank 800 beers last night at Turtle Bay and feel like shit Friday morning. Even small things like swearing on internal calls or meetings. Just because the MDs/VPs cracks jokes and drops F bombs, does not mean that someone who is still making an impression should join in on the racket.
Micro-management.
Too many meetings. I have no idea why we need to have two pre-meeting meetings, the actual meeting, and then a post-meeting meeting. Just say it all during THE meeting. Bonus points if during the pre-meetings I get asked to put something together and then it turns out my boss didn't actually ask anyone above him what they wanted to see so I get to throw out everything I did and start again.
People who zig zag on sidewalks when rushing to work. If you don’t look in your rear view mirror, don’t be surprised when someone crashes into you
MBA associate who does 0 work and asks to send him/her pdf so he/she can send to MD to pretend he/she did something
SCHEDULING... Seems like such a trivial task, but some of my most stressful moments in banking came from trying to find a time that will work for 5 participants from your client, 6 participants from the buyer deal team, and 253 participants from the various consultants the buyer has engaged. Bonus points for when you finally solve that puzzle and your MD (who will join only to show his face, then do other work for the duration of the call) is the gating party.
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